


king for the moment

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2016 [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fast and the Furious Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, Buffy Insert, Multi, Not Beta Read, Polyamory, Prompt Fic, There is nothing to warn about what is wrong with me?, Threesome, Wishlist_Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-06
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-09-06 22:09:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8771344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which Brian is too loyal, always. Sometimes it pays off.(Wishlist, Day 4)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This one is for currently2legit, who asked for anything in the Liable to Grow up Mean!verse. I decided to deliver with a sort of... midquel? It bridges the time between the other two parts, in any case. 
> 
> Title from Poe's Control, just like the first story's.

+

 

+

Brian is too loyal. 

It’s always been his damn downfall. Too loyal to all the wrong people, his mother told him before leaving him to rot in juvie for two years. He could have gotten off easy, if he’d snitched on the guys he was running that stolen car for, but Brian’s loyal. 

Brian’s always too damn fucking loyal. 

To the gang that treated him like expendable small fry and left him hanging out to dry. To Rome, who didn’t believe it, who called Brian a traitor for something out of his control. To the cops that never treated him like one of theirs because he was white trash, because he came from the wrong side of the fence and never thought to hide it. To Tanner, who, in the end, asked the impossible of Brian and thought Brian weak for failing. 

To Dom and Mia and their family, that rag-tag bunch of misfits he wanted to be a part of so desperately. 

Brian’s too damn loyal and somehow, it always blows up in his fucking face, because no matter who’s on the other end, they always take but never return.

It gets old, at some point, always offering and never receiving, always getting the short end of the stick, always waiting for someone to look at him and just – 

It gets old but it never stops hurting and maybe he’s a fucking idiot, maybe his mother was right, because god knows it’s never gotten him anywhere.

+

And then there’s Anna and Carter. 

No. Wait.

First there’s Miami, bolt-hole for the badly burned and newly lost, and there’s a dozen races that don’t make Brian less angry or lonely or fucked, a dozen races where he never stops looking over his shoulder, expecting Dom to be looking back at him with a proud look for smoking the competition. 

And then there’s Bilkins again, demanding a loyalty he doesn’t deserve, and Markham, who looks like he wants to shoot Brian in the face and be done with it, and an impossible job. 

Because sure, the drug lord who has never been arrested, the guy who finds every single undercover agent and off-duty cop like he has freaking magic powers, is going to fall for a racer appearing out of nowhere and asking stupid questions. 

It’s a job designed to fail, with a nice little fallback for Markham: when Verone inevitably gets away, Markham can still parade the cop-gone-bad that made headlines half a year ago in front of the public. Even if he fails, he wins. 

And Brian is his ticket, unwilling and unable to do a single fucking thing about it. 

And _then_ , only then, only at that point, Anna and Carter. 

+

Bilkins gives him a thick, only slightly edited file about Verone’s operation and his little teenage whore (Markham’s words), which Brian doesn’t dare take back to the houseboat.

So he drives around for an hour, finds a Starbucks in the worst tourist part of town and settles in for a long read where no one knows him, or cares that his hands are shaking, just a little. 

Verone is not small fry. Compared to him, Dom was nothing. The guy runs drugs, runs money, has a dozen legit businesses and a dozen more dirty ones. He’s got prostitutes working for him, dealers, heavy hitters. 

There are a dozen deaths attributed to the man and his goons, but nothing more solid than speculation on any of the cases. 

Anna is a cog in that machine, a little girl without a past or even a last name, always at Verone’s side, bed warmer or arm candy or something else entirely. 

From the look on her face as she stares the camera man down in one surveillance pictures, it’s ‘something else’.

From the scars on her body and the knife in a sheath under her dress, it’s not a gentle something. 

If Brian had to guess, ignoring the fact that she’s tiny, young and looks adorable, he’d say bodyguard. 

That alone makes him consider turning himself in and taking the time in solitary. (Hopefully. If they throw him in gen pop, he’s dead and he knows it.)

But what’s worse is what’s not written in that file, but between the lines, somewhere in there. 

The prostitutes are fine. No arrests, no drugs, if they have records, they’re old. All of them have solid backgrounds. There is nothing shady going on, apart from sex for money. Those women are happy. 

The drug dealers are clean, too. Dirty, yeah, but none of them do their own product, and all of them do neat business. 

And worst of all, the drugs are clean, too. No cheap shit, no poison, solid quality, decent. The kind that makes happy customers.

For a king pin drug lord in white linen, Verone runs a tight ship and a clean house. That means that the people that work for him are happy. Content with their places, their income, their work. 

Loyal.

And Brian knows from loyalty.

+

In the end he goes with the in customs wants him to take, anyway: the girl. 

The girl at the races, hair in curls, wearing leather pants, stiletto heels and a halter top, a tan and a smile, car keys in hand, slim knife down one leg. 

He takes a deep breath, puts on Iceman like a costume and meanders up to her. “That your ride?” he asks, pointing toward the sweet little Evo she’s sitting on, black and green, zippy as hell. 

She turns away from a conversation with a few race bunnies to look him over, top to bottom and back and her smile grows predatory. 

“Yeah, she is,” she answers, like she expects him to give her shit for being a woman and racing. 

“Gorgeous,” he counters, easily, not breaking her green gaze. 

She smirks. “Which one of us.”

“Both?”

She laughs out loud this time and he asks her for specs, which she happily provides before asking about his own car. She saw him, she says, and Bullit’s car is pretty awesome. 

It’s easy conversation, the party grinding on around them, tires squealing in the background, and Brian almost thinks he’s done the impossible, almost thinks he’s _in_ , when she puts a hand on his arm, leans in real close and asks, “Is this the part where you seduce me to the side of good?”

He freezes. 

Goddamnit, he freezes almost as badly as he did when he called in that chopper for Vince, looking at Dom’s eyes and the realization dawning there. 

Some UC he is. 

She notices, pats his arm. “Don’t worry, Brian. I like you.” She spins her keys in her hand. “Follow me. We need to talk.”

+

“So,” she asks, any hour later, somewhere outside the city limits, in the dark, where a former cop can be shot and disappeared without anyone being any wiser. “Who the hell are you?”

Brian shifts to feel the weight of his gun at the small of his back and shrugs, knowing the answer might determine the rest of his life (however short that may be) and not caring nearly enough. “You don’t know?”

She hops onto the hood of her Evo, still warm from the ride, and grins. “I know that I had you pegged as dangerous the minute you showed up on the scene. I know my contacts didn’t know you. I know the cops took you in a week ago and let you back out less than twenty-four later. And I know you never showed the slightest interest in me before they got to you, but came over to flirt with me tonight like a man on a mission.”

Brian has a choice here. He can lie, try to play it off, maybe get in a fight with her and try to run. 

Or he can just tell her everything, because neither Markham nor Bilkins deserve an ounce of loyalty and he’s tired of giving it anyway.

Actually, Brian’s just tired, full stop. 

Besides, let’s be honest. The jig’s already up anyway and no matter how well he lies, he’s not getting out of this one. 

So he takes a deep breath, feels for his gun again, and says, “I used to be a cop.”

+

“Yeah,” he tells Markham. “I’m meeting her for lunch today.”

Brow furrowed, the man demands, “How the hell did you manage that?”

Brian bats his lashes at him and lets a shit-eating grin split his face. 

+

Anna is wearing a sundress when she stands to meet him, kiss to the cheek, hello, hello. 

The two bruisers sitting two tables away don’t look happy. 

Brian flicks his eyes at them and Anna sighs. “Enrique and Roberto are my bodyguards,” she tells him, annoyed rich girlfriend. “They’re looking out for me. Right boys?”

“Right, boss,” Roberto answers obediently and Brian snorts. They’re not really good at this whole subterfuge thing. 

“No, but seriously,” she interjects, “if we’re going with the gilded cage act, they’ll be following me around. I am, after all, weak, defenseless and possibly damaged by my dark, abusive past. Carter needs to look out for me.” She blinks at him, eyes big and round and tear-filled. 

“Jesus,” Brian hisses.

She leans back, smirking. “So, spill. Are you a good little boy?”

With a shrug, he mirrors her, “I could deliver you two to Markham on a silver platter and he’d be suspicious, but yeah, I’m a good little boy. They bought it.”

She chuckles. “Well then, it’s a good thing that’s exactly what you’re going to do, isn’t it?”

+

It takes ten days for Brian to meet Verone, because they need to sell this gig, and when he does, it’s at a club and they invest a half hour into alpha male dominance games over Anna before Verone orders them back to the compound he calls home. 

Once there, he morphs from total asshole to… something slightly less assholeish, Brian guesses. He strips his suit jacket and tie off, slumps into the nearest sofa and holds one arm out, waiting. 

Anna, kicking her heel off in one corner, sinks down next to him within moments, relaxing, her bare feet kicked up on his lap. He grimaces at them, shoves them off. She pokes him in the ribs and puts them right back. 

He growls, gives her ankle a little shake and then start massaging it. 

She sighs in bliss. 

Brian, meanwhile, stands there like an idiot until Verone looks up from their interaction to point toward another sofa. “Sit down, Brian.”

Brian sits. 

“Do you have any questions about our deal?”

The deal. Brian helps them fuck the cops and they help him get away with it. Freedom for everyone involved and the added bonus of watching Markham as he realizes his back-up criminal got away, too. 

He and Anna worked it out over a dozen stolen conversations, the hows and whens and whos. All the loopholes, all the tricks they’ll need to pull it off. 

It’s a good plan. Insane, but good. 

And it has Verone’s stamp of approval, apparently. 

“Nope,” Brian drawls, “I’m good if you are.”

“I trust Anna to act in my best interests and her judgement of people has yet to fail us.”

In other words: Anna trusts Brian, so Verone will. Somehow, it surprises Brian, despite everything he knows. 

“Good,” he says, for lack of anything else to say. 

“Good,” Verone echoes.

Anna rolls her eyes and stands. “I’m grabbing drinks, who wants?”

Three hours and about five beers later Brian decides that he actually likes Anna. Carter, too. 

He is so fucked. 

+

“How’d you end up with him, anyway?” he asks her, two days before the big run, laid out on his favorite beach, their boards casting enough shade for both of them. 

Beside him, Anna unties her bikini top and lies back down on her belly, sighing happily. There’s salt drying in clumps on her lashes. 

“Carter?”

“Mhm.”

She shrugs. “I pickpocketed a guy at one of his clubs, then beat the asshole up. Carter offered me a job right then and there.”

“How old were you?”

She smiles, a little bitterly. “Eighteen. I needed enough cash to rent a room so I could get a job.”

He eyes her out of the corner of his eye. “Runaway?”

Her smile grows darker. “Something like that.”

She has scars on her body, clean ones, like knife wounds, and ragged ones, like glass or metal shards, or something else entirely. Brian, who has cigarette burns on his thighs under his shorts, still, knows better than to ask. 

“And then?” he steers them back on track. 

“And then I started spending all my time with him and he kind of grows on you,” she deadpans. 

“Is that the short version?”

She rolls sideways, flashing him way too much skin and not appearing to care. “Are you asking me for reasons to like Carter?”

Is he? He’s putting his life and his future into this man’s hands. So yeah, “I think I am.”

She chuckles. “You just think he’s hot,” she jokes, then grows abruptly serious. “My mom once told me to judge people by what they do, not who they are.”

By the derision in her tone, he knows he doesn’t need to ask about her parents. “And Carter does – “

“Bad things,” she promptly fills in. “And sometimes good ones. And I have no idea what that makes him, but I know he’s been good to me and the rest of the world hasn’t. So I’m with him and I know he’s with me.”

It’s the most pragmatic approach to romance Brian’s ever heard of, but then he’s seen the two of them interact, has seen how comfortable they are. 

“Loyalty,” he summarizes, closing his eyes against the sting of the afternoon sun in his face. 

Anna nods. “Loyalty.”

+

“Listen,” Carter says, just before. “We’re heading to Argentina after this, then maybe Brazil.”

Says it like it’s perfectly alright to tell a former cop where he intends to hide from the law. 

“If you want a job, after this, we could always use someone like you.”

Brian laughs, flattered. “I thought you were settling down after this?”

“Going slower doesn’t mean stopping,” the older man informs him, then leans close, hand on Brian’s shoulder, “I have a younger lover to entertain, Brian. She’ll run off on me if she gets bored.”

The idea of Anna skipping out of Carter is so ridiculous that Brian just snorts. After a moment, so does Carter. 

“Alright. South America,” he finally agrees. “Maybe I’ll drop in.”

“You can help me keep her entertained.”

And call him crazy, but that sounds like and different kind of invitation all together.

+

In the end, it goes off without a hitch. 

Brian does his job perfectly and if there’s no Verone at the end of it, well, it’s not his problem someone botched the op and gave them away, made Verone change the plan on Brian, emergency escape, whoops. 

Brian is left with an angry Markham, a resigned Bilkins and a purged record.

He’s a free man. 

+

The first thing Brian does is get very, very drunk. 

Then he sets Tej to finding him another Skyline and tries to put his life into some semblance of order. 

+

He lasts half a year as a respectable blue collar citizen before he’s bored out of his skull and about ready to knock over a conveniences store just for a change in pace. 

When he tells Suki so, she laughs and tells him to entertain himself better. 

It reminds him of something.

+

Carter lives in style, no matter where he is, so the villa is kind of expected. As are Enrique and Roberto, both of whom nod at him as they let him through security, smirks playing on their mouths. 

As he takes a left toward the pool, as directed, he sees an angry Roberto slap a wad of cash in Enrique’s hand. 

Seeing as this is private property, Anna hasn’t bothered with a bikini top at all, just floats on her back in the middle of the pool, bug-eye sunglasses perched on her nose, tan and gorgeous. 

Carter is sitting on a lounge chair close by in shorts, fiddling with his phone for a moment before tucking it away between a stack of towels and looking at Brian with a smile.

“That took longer than expected,” he confesses.

Brian shrugs. “I felt like I had to enjoy the fruits of my labor for a while, you know? Honest living.”

“How long did you last?”

“Before I broke the first law? About three days.”

Behind them, Anna splashes in their general direction and demands, “Come in!” like Brian being there is perfectly expected. And maybe it is. 

“See? I told you, entertaining her is a two man job.”

“I heard that!”

“You were meant to, Corazon!”

This time, she swims up to the edge before splashing, thus drenching them both. Carter narrows his eyes at her, dangerously. 

Before they get into a water fight like a couple of five-year-olds, Brian strips off his shirt, empties his pockets, and leaps into the water right next to Anna, pulling her under with him.

+

Brian’s always been too damn loyal to people who neither wanted nor needed him to be. 

People who took but didn’t give. 

But Carter told Brian where they were going all the way back in Miami and Anna whispers, weeks after the pool, in the dead of night, “Buffy. My name is Buffy.”

And Brian thinks that this time, this time. 

And it is.

+

**Author's Note:**

> Come tumble with me [here](http://www.wordsformurder.tumblr.com/).


End file.
